


Snakesicle

by cunzy4



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley has a near death experience, Crowley is So Done (Good Omens), Death is not amused, Fluff, Gen, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), barely any angst, he probably needs a babysitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cunzy4/pseuds/cunzy4
Summary: When Crowley nearly freezes to discorporation, he is mistaken for dead and wakes up in a morgue. Needless to say, he is very cross about being treated like a medical marvel.Inspired by an episode of Mulberry (1992).
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	Snakesicle

**Author's Note:**

> I can't get enough of these idiots. So when I realized that a scenario from the adorable BBC show Mulberry would fit in perfectly with these characters, I couldn't resist.

Crowley woke up in a tiny box.

He’d woken up in strange places before. A coffin, when he’d been buried alive sometime in the 17th century. Behind the wheel of his speeding Bentley- now that had been a rude awakening. Underwater, once, when he’d fallen asleep before a battle and not woken up until the ship he was aboard had sunk. 

Of all the unexpected places to wake up, a morgue was hardly the most pleasant.

Crowley couldn’t see anything yet, but he knew it had to be a morgue. He could taste it in the air before he even opened his eyes. Cold metal, formaldehyde, and dead humans. So similar, yet so very different, to the smell of live humans.

Most of all, he was bloody  _ cold. _

The metal of the box he was stuck inside leeched away any heat his cold-blooded body was able to produce, but the chill went deeper than that. Crowley’s frozen brain protested as he tried to puzzle together how he had ended up here. After a moment’s thought, he managed to conjure an image of himself slipping and falling over the side of a bridge-  _ not  _ his fault, damn black ice- and landing in a snowdrift, the cold seizing at his body and subsequently losing consciousness before he could miracle himself to safety. Some well-meaning human must have found him and thought him dead, which was a reasonable assumption considering the lack of any usual life signs. 

But he hadn’t been dead, nor even discorporated. In a reflexive defense mechanism, he’d taken what was left of his essence and curled it into a tiny protective ball at the center of his soul. He could exist in this hibernative coma-like state for years if need be, although waking up would be difficult and unpleasant. Bodies that had been dead for a while usually didn’t take well to walking around again.

Crowley was still _ freezing.  _ He would be shivering uncontrollably if his reptilian body contained such a reflex. But at least here, out of the elements, he was no longer on the edge of discorporation. Which meant he could focus on escaping this tiny box like a zombie Houdini.

Pushing against the walls yielded nothing. These boxes were clearly not meant to be opened from the inside. He couldn’t yet gather his wits about him enough to perform a miracle, but straining his imagination until smoke nearly came out his ears meant that suddenly, these boxes  _ could  _ be opened from the inside.

Light flooded his eyes as the recessed drawer where Crowley’s dead body had been stored slid open. He blinked furiously, cursing and pressing his fists into his eyes as he struggled to sit up. Where were his bloody sunglasses?

HELLO, DEMON CROWLEY.

“Ngk,” Crowley said.

Slowly, he lowered his hands and stared at the figure next to him as he waited for his frozen brain to catch up. 

“So, this is it then,” he said. “You’ve come for my soul?”

As always, Death had no sense of humor. He stood over Crowley, his face hidden beneath the hood, as impassive as ever. YOU ARE NOT DEAD. AND I CANNOT REAP ONE OF YOUR KIND.

Crowley shrugged. “Well, a guy can dream. What are you doing here, then, if you’re not taking me?”

I AM EVERYWHERE, Death said. BUT HERE, WHERE THE NEWLY DEAD GATHER, I AM MORE THAN OTHER PLACES.

“Just my lucky day, then,” Crowley said. “You haven’t seen my sunglasses, have you?” He glanced down. “Or the rest of my clothes?”

The Reaper tilted his head, as though Crowley was a mildly interesting puzzle it was trying to figure out. I HAVE NOT.

Death might have been willing to help him follow up on that little mystery, but at that moment the door opened and a human walked in. A medical student or an intern, from the looks of him, one who hadn’t yet lost the ability to be surprised by unusual occurrences. 

He took one look at Crowley, then screamed and fainted dead away.

\-----

“Look, just tell me where my clothes are and we can put this whole thing behind us!” Crowley shouted, clutching a sheet protectively around his body. He’d been crowded against a wall by a team of frenzied medical professionals, some of whom were nearly foaming at the mouth in response to this Very Exciting Thing. In fairness, few exciting things tend to happen when one’s line of work involves exclusively interacting with dead bodies. Crowley couldn’t blame them for jumping all over him like a pack of wild dogs.

That wasn’t to say it wasn’t incredibly aggravating.

“Oi! Personal space!” he snapped at one doctor who grabbed at the sheet. He held back the urge to hiss, trying with limited success to suppress his snakelike characteristics. His eyes were a wash, they’d already seen the snake pupils. He’d rather keep the forked tongue and sharp fangs under wraps for now, but if they continued to corner him like this, he could not be held responsible for biting people.

If he’d been in full control of his faculties, it would be a simple matter for Crowley to  _ suggest _ to all of these humans that they’d ever seen a miraculous walking corpse and nudge them to go back to their work as if nothing had happened. But he couldn’t shrug off a near discorporation as easily as he shed his skin every year. He felt as though his insides were encased in ice, freezing his higher functions and cutting off access to his powers.

It would take at least a full week’s nap underneath a heated blanket, preferably wrapped around a warm angel, for him to feel right again. But right now, a crowd of eager doctors stood between Crowley and the promise of his warm bed, and it was all he could do to keep himself standing upright.

“Look, there’s been a mistake!” he protested. “I wasn’t dead, you lot must have missed it on your little scanners! Now can I  _ please  _ get my clothes and go home?” He spat the P word like it was a foul curse, but desperate times.

“There was no mistake!” the grabby doctor insisted. “You were definitely dead. This is a medical miracle, and we need to study you!”

“No one will be  _ studying _ anything!” Crowley yelled, his voice a touch more shrill than he would have cared to admit. “You can’t keep me here, I have to sign waivers and stuff if you want to treat me like a lab rat!”

That seemed to dampen the doctors’ enthusiasm somewhat, but they still refused to back off from him. One of them tried to shine a flashlight in his eyes, causing him to hiss at the offender and shrink away.

“Will you people leave me alone?” he shouted over the barrage of medical questions. “Azrael, little help here?”

Death, who was still in the room and had always been, looked quizzical. ARE YOU SPEAKING TO ME?

“Yes! Can’t you, like, cause a distraction? Kill someone or something?”

Death looked unamused as the doctors jumped at Crowley apparently talking to thin air.

“Have you always suffered from hallucinations?” Grabby asked eagerly. “Or is it a side effect of being dead? How much brain damage do you think you suffered?”

Crowley shoved him away before he could make another pass at the sheet. “I don’t have brain damage, I wasn’t dead, and I’m not hallucinating! You lot need to stop shouting leave me alone!”

Satan bless it, this was getting annoying. Crowley was freezing cold and his head was pounding, and that hardly put him in a good mood. He was _this close_ to losing his cool, no pun intended, and smiting every single one of these idiot doctors. 

Speaking of smiting, where was Aziraphale? Surely the angel should have sensed his distress by now and come running. Dramatic rescues were usually Crowley’s thing, but he really couldn’t see himself getting out of this particular mess without a deus ex machina of some variety.

Asking for help was embarrassing, though. And Crowley  _ really  _ hated praying.

“Aziraphale,” he mumbled to himself, sagging against the wall as his legs spontaneously decided to go on strike and stop supporting his weight. “Don’t know if you’re busy or anything, but I could kinda use a hand here. I’d really rather not get dissected by a bunch of crazy doctor people. Again.” 

There was no response for a long moment.

Then, the lights flickered.

“Hello, my dear boy,” Aziraphale’s familiar voice came from behind the crowd of doctors. “It seems you’ve found yourself in a bit of a mess again, haven’t you?”

It was almost comical the way everyone’s faces went slack simultaneously, and they parted like the Red Sea to admit Aziraphale though their ranks.

“Off with you.” Aziraphale made a shooing motion, and suddenly everyone remembered they had Urgent Things to be doing elsewhere, and no one could quite recall why they’d even come into the room.

Crowley grinned weakly. “Hey, angel,” he said, feigning nonchalance. “Haven’t seen my clothes, have you?”

Aziraphale studied him for a moment, unamused. “How do you get yourself into these situations, Crowley?”

“Totally not my fault, angel. Just an accident, or a roundabout and very implausible murder attempt. Not sure which.” Crowley raised a slightly trembling hand. “Scout’s honor.”

Aziraphale noticed and grabbed at his hand. “Oh, Crowley, you’re freezing,” he said sympathetically. “Come here, my dear, let me help you get warm.”

Aziraphale’s hand almost burned him at the contact, but after so long in the cold, the warmth was positively heavenly (pun intended). Crowley instinctively leaned into the heat source, and his traitorous legs chose that moment to buckle beneath him.

Strong arms caught him before he could hit the ground. “Oh, this won’t do at all,” he dimly heard Aziraphale fretting. “Let’s get you home so you can warm up, alright?”

“Hmnn,” Crowley mumbled into Aziraphale’s chest. Suddenly, he didn’t care about a thing. He was enveloped in warm soft white wings and the smell of old books and cinnamon.

Still in the room, where he always had been and always would be, Azrael watched the pair vanish. If he had any thoughts on such an unusual occurrence, he kept them to himself.

* * *

Without quite noticing that he’d fallen asleep, Crowley drifted into wakefulness wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. He snuggled deeper into the comfort, the ache in his bones telling him that he had a few hours or days to go before he would be ready to slither out from this little nest.

“Crowley? Are you awake?” Aziraphale’s voice came from somewhere nearby.

“No,” Crowley mumbled into the pillow. He briefly tasted the air with his tongue  _ (plants coffee Angel and a lingering hint of dead people)  _ and decided the world could wait a while longer.

“Are you still cold?” A slight shift of the mattress, and the sound of a page turning. “Do you need anything?”

“Nn. M’perfect. Thanks, angel.” 

“Anytime, my dear. Go back to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Crowley tried to say something else, but sleep had already claimed him again.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is wondering, the episode went something like this:
> 
> "What are you doing in a morgue?"  
> "I thought I was dead."  
> "You're the son of Death! You can't die!"  
> "...so you're not going to take my soul?"  
> "Get out of here, you're such a disappointment as a Reaper."


End file.
